Before you can make use of your centre you have to be able to find it and establish control over it. This cannot be done when you are tense or off balance therefore the first body mechanical principles need to be loose, stacked and vertical to attain proper balance. Zhan Zhuang or standing meditation is an excellent practice to obtain your centre and is often neglected in some martial arts.

2. Move your centre:

Once you are properly balanced the you can begin to move your centre. Every movement, no matter how small (i.e. Having the hand moved across the body = the first move of a Sanchin strike) comes from moving your centre.

You can move your centre in three was and numerous combinations of the three: Linear, rotation, and revolve.

Linear does not have to be straight forward or straight back it just has to have the centre moving along a linear line – you could be taking an angle on an opponent but using a linear line.

Rotation means that you have a fixed point and your centre rotates around that point. Aikido uses this movement a great deal.

Revolve means that your body revolves around your centre as the axis. Chen Taiji uses this movement a great deal.

If you want to know if you are moving your centre properly pick any Kata or form and place your arms at your sides and keep them there. Now do the form without arms and only move if you know HOW your centre is moving. If you reach a point in the Kata where you do not know how your centre moves then you are simply flapping your arms there instead of moving with power. Determine how you move your centre before going to the next step of the kata.

3. Connect to their centre:

To control the other party you need to create a “visual” line from your centre to theirs (this is trickier when you get to principle #5). Here you are going to take advantage of their commitment to applying pressure on you and the tension chain created to move them by connecting to their centre and then applying force along that line to unbalance them.

4. Control the Joint Mass Centre (JMC):

This is an exceptionally hard concept to put into words but every Judoka and every Wrestler knows of the sweet spot but often how to locate it is difficult. I am not going to go into detail here but there are clips on my site going into detail about how to locate it and feel it when you have it.

5. Don’t let them connect to your centre:

Just as you can control your opponent by connecting to their centre they can control you by connecting to yours. Therefore you must connect to theirs abut never let them connect to yours.

Conclusion:

While there is no mystical aspect or magic or chi to principles 3, 4 and 5 it is very mental determined. Only by being able to visualize what you want can you allow your body to find the alignments required to accomplish your goals. But it is not mysterious in any way although being able to fill the JMC on a much bigger partner and control them will have them wondering….

Rick: "If you want to know if you are moving your centre properly pick any Kata or form and place your arms at your sides and keep them there. Now do the form without arms and only move if you know HOW your centre is moving. If you reach a point in the Kata where you do not know how your centre moves then you are simply flapping your arms there instead of moving with power. Determine how you move your centre before going to the next step of the kata."

There are a lot of misunderstandings about the centre and using it. Often times people thing that a Chinese translation is a metaphor when in fact it is a direct instruction, an example is sticking your belly out. A lot of Aikido players explain away their large ale gut by saying that it is their tan den /' dantien.If you stick your belly out while doing sanchin and have somebody push their hands at it , you can push them back with little effort when you move.

It depends what you are doing, are you attacking the centre or using the centre to generate power?The one technique that I know that employs both is the palm heel to the jaw, travelling upward Your power, in an upward trajectory like an uppercut comes from your centre even from your heels or the ground if you like.............it strikes the jaw and pushes the head back over the centre and unbalances.As they say in Aikido " Control the head, and the body follows"

There is one problem with those clips, it's a bit like when I used to do tradidional Aikido. For the technique to work you have to behave in a way that has already been predicted for you. In those clips if the guy had relaxed his arm all the techniques would have failed.

This is a good example from sport aikido where if you use your centre correctly then you don't need uke to be obliging for you

I think any demo clip I have ever seen has a cooperating meat puppet. You pretty much need one or the guy being demonstrated on gets hurt or should.

The Aikido clip is nice clip but I must be missing the lack of cooperation part because you could ask what was uncooperative about just standing in that neutral stance or why didn’t he just step back or raise his hands or ...

But I won’t ask any of that because I know that to demonstrate what the guy is showing that cooperation was required and anything else might have distracted.

Frankly the meat puppet in the clip I posted is immaterial to the moving with the centre I wanted to point out.

I personally like the way the guy on my clip moves better with his centre because I like the verticality he maintains almost all the time unless the move requires a loss of it.

Please note I am certainly not saying the Aikido guy is doing anything wrong it this is just my personal preference.

The reason that I posted the aiki clip is that the guys doing it are responding to different things, for example when the uke moves back then the other guy uses his left arm, also later on he uses his elbow to redirect all uke's energy downward.....now the Hsinghi guy could probably do the same thing but he is not showing it.When I teach people how to fight I always teach them to set their opponent up, and to have a move behind and a move in front ready, Self defence can be a bit different but even then you benefit from this type of training. An obvious sparing example is you jab if the guy stays there you are in range for a right, but if he moves back then you throw a left side or ,roundhouse kick.it will look like the guy walked into it.........when thinking of the centre it really somes into it's own when doing pushing hands or sticking hands, but again it can be difficult to know what is going on. In one technique I know it looks like the guy is getting magnetically drawn around you, like you have some super chi power but in fact it is just his strength being redirected.